


Hold Back The River

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Friends to Lovers, Javert Lives, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Seine, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 08:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19002499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: Javert lives and learns, and faces one fear at a time; starting with the water and ending with Jean Valjean.





	Hold Back The River

**Author's Note:**

> Based entirely on that one second shot of Russell Crowe's face in the movie, after Valjean jumps into the water.

It had begun, innocently enough, with the fish pond.

Valjean had set to clearing it one day in August, before the summer heat faded and the chill of the water would leave him no stomach for the task. This he had told Javert at breakfast, as he did every morning, laying out a careful plan, should Javert wish to join him. Once upon another life, Javert would have railed against such domesticity, a thing he had never wanted or asked for. It was only now that he had begun to understand that some part of him, of who he was now, desired and needed everything Valjean could offer him. 

To begin with, that day, he did not think of the water.

Instead he followed Valjean into the garden, down to the far corner where the fish pond shimmered in the sun trap between the eastern wall and the beech trees. Javert had long before mapped this garden, counted off the steps as he paced from end to end, wanting to leave Valjean’s house but knowing, in his heart, that he had nowhere else to go. Valjean had allowed him his pacing, refusing to interrupt him for what felt like weeks and weeks but was probably, in reality, a few days. When Javert had finally spent a day doing something other than walking the grounds, Valjean had simply smiled and had not said a word. He had known then that Javert would stay. Perhaps he had always known it. Perhaps he had known their whole lives that it would end up like this; Javert would not put such otherworldly knowledge past him. The man had been touched by something. Someone.

Valjean set his tools down at the pond’s edge and made a careful turn about it, looking for something that Javert could not possibly guess at. Instead he settled down on a promising looking patch of grass, one that was also bathed in sunlight, green and fresh. He had brought the newspaper with him, a suggestion that he might sit and entertain himself, but he knew he would only watch Valjean. Perhaps Valjean knew it too, because he began to talk.

“There are no fish in here,” he said, pulling experimentally at a patch of weeds settled at the edge. “They all died, although of what we could not tell.”

Javert did not answer, but it did not seem to matter.

“I suppose we could have replaced them, but we never found the time.”

He went silent and Javert glanced at his face; wherever he was, Valjean was very far away.

“Maybe I should replace them now. Now that the garden has taken on a new lease of life.”

Javert understood that comment. Valjean, for all he had been nursing Javert these last months, had also been in mourning, for the daughter who had been married soon after the day of the barricade. For that first month or so, the garden had been neglected as Valjean exhausted himself with Javert’s care. He had accepted the abuse Javert threw at him with silence and a small benevolent smile, and it had almost driven Javert to distraction. It was only when he was well enough to leave his bed and ghost about the house that he realised Valjean had not been saving his silence only for him. He was little more than a ghost himself, one which barely ate the food it had prepared, which barely seemed to sleep beyond a few hours at the very dead of night.

They had moved slowly around one another, learning the beats of each other’s lives and so resolutely not talking about anything that Javert had wondered, in his fog, whether Valjean already regretted pulling him from the water. 

It was only when Cosette had come to visit that anything had begun to make sense to him.

He was seated in the library before the fire, wrapped in a blanket that Valjean had forced upon him, pretending to read the newspaper that had been pressed into his hands.

Instead, he was listening.

Cosette had arrived in a burst of colour an hour or so previously, like the first rainfall that had quenched the dust at a burning Toulon, the rain that had made the gasping convicts dare to throw down their tools and raise their faces to the heavens in exuberant thanks. It was the only time the beasts had seemed to be men, because Javert had always awaited that rain with equal fervour. Cosette burst into their creeping, breathless existence and made Valjean smile, a smile more real than any he had put on that last two months. Javert, silent, retreated to the library after Cosette begged to go the parlour, so she could make the tea for them. Valjean appeared with blanket, newspaper and tea for Javert a few moments later, then retreated to Cosette’s side. The tea cooled on the side table as Javert pricked up his ears, strained to hear some signs of life from the little room. All he got was the high, excited chattering sound that was Cosette, and the slow, deep rumble that was the occasional additional comment from Valjean. 

Perhaps he had dozed then, for the next thing he heard was their voices much closer, at the door, and there was the sound of the cupboard door when Valjean removed her coat from the hooks.

“I do wish you would love yourself better, Papa. For my sake, if you will not do it for yourself.”

“I shall endeavour to be better,” he replied, and Javert wondered why Cosette did not comment upon the catch in his voice.

“Goodbye, Papa,” and the sound of a kiss. “If you do not visit us soon, I will be forced to return here and criticise you more. Please do not turn me into a shrew.”

“I shall not.”

When the front door closed and Javert heard the wheels of her fine carriage clatter away, he waited for Valjean to come in to him. When he did not, Javert untangled himself from the blanket and padded in stockinged feet from the room.

All was quiet.

He stepped carefully, unsure of what he would find around the next corner.

Valjean was in the kitchen, facing the back wall, turned away the door. He was leaning, forehead touching the wall, and his shoulders heaved. Javert was frozen to the spot, staring dumbly, when Valjean finally turned. His eyes were red from weeping, and he hid his face in his hands.

“Please leave me to my thoughts,” he mumbled, then when Javert did not move. “Go! Leave me!”

A better man, a stronger man, would have stayed. He would have steered Valjean to a chair, made some tea, given him a handkerchief when he had finished with his tears. Javert knew this because he had once watched Monsieur Madeleine do the same, comforting a worker of his who had lost his wife and babe in childbirth. Javert had shivered to see the mayor’s hand laid upon the man’s shoulder; his whole life long, he could not remember ever having been touched so, or touching another. It was not for men like him to understand such things. Monsieur Madeleine – _Valjean_ – was better than Javert would ever be. 

He did not stay. 

He fled, and he did not leave his chamber until the next morning. Valjean had not said a thing.

“Javert? Javert, where are you?”

That voice. Forever calling him back.

Valjean was beside him, sitting on the grass, as he removed his shoes and stockings, placing them carefully off to the side. 

“You were far away,” Valjean continued. “You have not been so for a good long while.”

“My apologies. I was –”

Javert stopped short; Valjean was rolling up his trouser legs, revealing inches of skin paler than any on his arms, face or neck. This was the real colour of his skin, how he would look if he had not been burned for so many years by hours and hours in the sun. It was a vulnerable colour, and Javert had to look away to stop himself reaching out and laying his own hand, naturally duskier, on Valjean’s leg, just to see the comparison. 

“Javert?”

“I was thinking of your daughter,” he confessed, and looked back briefly, enough to see Valjean raise an eyebrow, a bemused smile on his face.

“I confess she is often on my mind,” he said slowly. “But I am at a loss as to why she should be on yours.”

“I was only remembering the afternoon she came to visit. You have changed since then. You are…happy?”

Valjean’s sharp intake of breath told him that he well remembered that day too. They had never spoken of that moment in the kitchen. Javert hoped, suddenly, desperately, that they would not speak of it now. He had not intended to bring it up.

“I am happy, I think. Happier than I ever believed I could be without her by my side.”

There was silence then, blessed silence, for it seemed that Valjean did not wish to discuss it either. At length, he eased himself from the ground and took up his net, stepping carefully to the pond’s edge. The long grass covered his bare feet and Javert forced himself to turn to his newspaper. He was far too close to opening his wretched mouth and saying something he would regret.

The morning passed quietly enough, after that. The sun was high in the sky and Valjean had cleared the pond of whatever he deemed unnecessary to its survival, when he returned to its edge with a spade and began to carefully work the ground around it. Javert, returning from a trip to the kitchen with tea and apples for the both of them, arrived back just in time to see Valjean lose his balance and topple into the water with a surprised cry.

_A splash and a scream, a scream cut off as his head is pushed under the filthy surface. The water is foul. It tastes of mud and oh, he cannot breathe, he cannot breathe._

Javert dropped the cups and began to run.

_They pull him up and they are laughing, hands tugging at him before he is pushed back in._

_They press him down._

_Water in his nose._

_Water in his mouth._

_He cannot breathe._

_He is going to die._

_He cannot breathe._

“Valjean!” Javert cries, and he does not recognise his own voice. He stops at the water’s edge and tries to reach. He cannot.

_He cannot breathe._

_He must._

_He cannot._

_He is going to die._

“Javert!” Valjean has already surfaced, chuckling, but his smile fades. He clambers from the pond and Javert cannot understand why he sinks to his knees, until he realises he has fallen to the ground, and he is shaking and oh, he cannot breathe. He cannot-

“JAVERT!” 

Someone shakes him, hands pressing heavily onto his shoulders. “What is wrong, man? Javert?”

He cannot breathe.

He was not expecting the hand that struck him, but accepted it when it did. He drew a breath, filling his lungs, painful but welcome and when his vision cleared, Valjean was there before him. His face was a picture of concern but his hand, the one that had struck Javert, stroked gently at his abused cheek. 

“Javert, what happened? Are you well?”

_The water. Oh God, he had forgotten._

_He thought he had forgotten._

“My-my apologies,” he said, and he did not look at Valjean. He could not look at him, for if he were to look, he would begin to talk.

“I do not know what came over me. I suddenly felt very faint. Perhaps it is the heat.”

As he spoke, he forced himself to his feet and Valjean, thankfully, allowed him to do so with no more questions. Instead, he looked down at himself, his soaked clothes, and smiled wryly.

“Perhaps we have both had enough for today. Come. I will change and then make us some lunch.”

Javert nodded tightly, his heart still pounding, as he followed Valjean into the house. If the other man looked back at him with anything like concern, Javert pretended that he did not see. 

Daydreams of his hands laid on Valjean seemed very far away. 

*

That night he dreamed, a nightmare that he had not suffered for so long that he could not remember the last time it had forced him to waking, drenched in sweat and shivering so much he had almost fallen from the bed. 

His own shout woke him, and Javert lay in paralysed fear that he had roused Valjean, and that the man would come knocking at the door as though Javert were a child who needed tending. His heartbeat thrummed in his ears but, thankfully, Valjean did not come. 

Javert lay awake for a long while after, almost until dawn began to filter through the curtains. He could not explain what had happened in the garden the previous day, and he was glad for the fact that Valjean had not mentioned it again. Javert was used to the dream, in a way. When he was a boy, a young man even, he had woken so often to the feel of water filling his mouth that it had become more normal than anything else. He had never- the panic he had suffered in the garden was stronger than anything he had ever felt before. He did not know he could feel so. He did not know his heart was capable. It had not been like the dream. It had been like being there, back in the river, twelve years old and convinced he was going to die right there, murdered by boys who would never be punished for the death of a gypsy bastard. 

And the thing was, the thing that worried him more than any other, was that he had felt so for the sake of Jean Valjean.

If he could explain the dream away, even explain his fear to himself – he was recovering still from a life threatening fever, after all – he could not explain the skip of his heart when Valjean looked at him, smiled at him, touched him. He had never had to explain such a thing, least of all to himself. 

Valjean was mercifully quiet on the subject of the garden and the pond at breakfast. In fact, he was quiet on all subjects, and it only occurred to Javert after Valjean had left for the day, to visit Cosette, that the man had been watching him. Watching and waiting, waiting for something that Javert did not know how to give him. He had never spoken of that day at the river, not in all of his long years, and he would not start now. His disloyal heart may be willing to offer Valjean everything it had but his mind was better behaved. 

When Valjean returned in the evening, he was in such a state of joy that even Javert could not have failed to recognise it.

“I have received splendid news,” he said, shrugging off his coat and near bounding into the kitchen to set water boiling. “News that was never meant for such a man as I.”

“Tell it then,” Javert growled, although he was so entranced that he could just have easily smiled. “You wish to. That much is clear.”

Valjean took Javert’s hand, impatient, and tugged him towards a chair. Javert found that his knees willingly buckled at being handled so, and he did not know where to look when Valjean did not release his hand. Perhaps Valjean needed an anchor, just as Javert did.

“Cosette is with child,” Valjean said, and the smile that split his face was warm as the summer sun. “I am to be a grandfather.”

Javert had never had cause to offer congratulations to another, not beyond the birthday wishes expected by superiors, but he was familiar with how it should be done.

“My congratulations,” he said. “When is the babe due?”

His voice rang false in his own ears, but Valjean’s smile only widened and he squeezed Javert’s captive hand.

“She cannot say for sure. It is very early. Perhaps April or May.”

“Does her husband know?”

“He does. They have only told me.”

Valjean chuckled.

“And now I have told you. I know I can trust you to keep our secret, can I not?”

“I have no one to tell,” Javert shifted and Valjean released his hand, as though only realising then that he held it still. “But I am happy for you.”

Valjean peered at him, brows furrowed, before he laughed and stood to pour water into the teapot.

“I do believe you are being sincere. Who would have thought it, three months ago?”

“I have never knowingly told a lie,” Javert shrugged. “And I will not begin now.”

“Have you not?” Valjean turned, and that look was back; the searching, searing look that shook him down to his bones. He tried to outstare Valjean but slipped and faltered long before the other man.

“No,” Valjean said eventually, so quietly that Javert had to lean forwards to hear him. “I do not suppose you ever knowingly have.”

If Javert were strong, strong like he had once been, he would have asked Valjean to explain himself. He was not strong, not like the man who had leapt from the bridge. That man had been sure of one thing, and acted upon it; he could not live in the world of Jean Valjean, and so he must leave it. That man had been a fool, rash where Javert had never before been rash, but at least he had known his own mind. Javert did not know anything anymore; if he had ever learned a thing, he had forgotten it. 

“Come,” Valjean said, putting down the teacups with a little more force than was his habit. “Enough melancholy. Cosette informs me I cannot be wretched on a glorious day such as this.”

It was only later that night, safe in the refuge of his bed once more, that Javert realised what Valjean had said. He must have been unhappy when he arrived at the Pontmercy household, for Cosette to have accused him of wretchedness. 

He hoped, although he hardly dared to hope, that Valjean had been thinking of him. 

*

As autumn came, there was less to be done save for the harvest, and Javert retreated within himself. He felt Valjean watching him, a questioning look on his face that he did not add voice to, and they were once again awkward with one another where, before the pond, they had been learning to treat one another as friends. Javert did not know what to do, to make it any better. He could only hope that Valjean understood and that, one day perhaps, he too might begin to understand it all. 

The autumn was a cold one, colder than any Javert could remember, and the river froze by the beginning of November. Valjean took daily walks through the streets, distributing money and fresh bread to the poor that he found there. He tried to convince Javert to accompany him on such outings, but Javert would not go. He did not deserve the looks that the wretched people gave to Valjean. He could not bear to have their eyes on him, not when he had never taken the time to look at them. Instead he hid himself in the library or in the kitchen, and pretended that he did not hear Valjean calling his name. 

That was until the day Valjean came marching into the kitchen, Javert’s greatcoat and hat tucked under his arm. He draped them over Javert’s lap and squared up before him, hands clasped behind his back.

“You are going to accompany me today. Please put on your coat.”

“I-” Javert stared at him, aware that his chin had gone slack. “I do not wish to. Please-”

“You will,” Valjean took a step closer and, for a wild moment, Javert thought he was going to reach out and stroke his hair. “We do not have to walk the streets and give alms. We do not have to speak to anyone, not even one another.”

“How-” Javert swallowed and he could not look Valjean in the eye. “How-”

“Do not think we have lived like this for several months and that I have not learned of you, Javert. I understand that people are too much for you at the moment. You do not, however, have to imprison yourself. You – you are safe with me.”

Javert felt an unfamiliar rumble in his chest, something threatening to bubble out of him, and he found, before he knew what was happening, that he was laughing. Valjean watched him, bemused at first, but then he laughed too. 

“Jean Valjean,” Javert shook his head and stood to put on his coat, because there was nothing else he could possibly do. “I know it.”

He buttoned his coat with fingers that barely trembled.

“I know it.”

They walked slowly along the icy streets, partly because Valjean warned him that the stones were slippery, and partly because Javert discovered that his self-imposed isolation had done his stamina little good. Where once he had strode his beat, outpaced any man in the department, he now found himself short of breath and struggling to keep up with Valjean. He commented on it, teeth gritted, and Valjean chuckled once more. It seemed it was a day for laughing.

“Javert, you are only just recovered from illness. Of course you will walk a little slower! There is no shame in it.”

Shame, shame, shame. Always the talk of shame, that came back to haunt him when he thought he may have forgotten it. He was sure that Valjean did not mean to remind him of it, to make him feel more ashamed than he already did, although a man with a blacker heart might accuse his saviour of such a thing. Javert did not think his soul black.

In all honesty, he was not even sure that he possessed one.

Valjean seemed set on it though, and so he would try. He would try for the rest of his life to make it up to the man and, if he failed, at least Valjean would not judge him for it. He was not sure that Valjean would ever judge him for anything. 

They walked beside the river, on a well-worn path that Valjean trod with so little care that Javert could only conclude he came here often. Children played on the frozen water, sliding and darting, their shrieks and laughter enough to set his teeth on edge. The ice creaked but it held, thick and unyielding to their quick, light steps, and Javert felt his heart quicken in his chest as he imagined the tumultuous water down below. _So easy to fall. So easy to lose your step and then choking, choking, choking…_

Valjean stopped for a moment to watch them, joy lighting his face in a way that it had not since that day he announced Cosette’s pregnancy. Javert watched him, the old fascination of the policeman creeping to the forefront of his battered mind; Valjean loved children, truly loved them in a way that Javert knew he would never understand. Cheeky children always grew into delinquent adults and he could not see them for anything but those adults they would become. 

Not that these urchins would become adults, if they continued to treat the ice so carelessly, jumping and jumping until it began to splinter on the surface and then scampering away. Javert did not think he could stand it if one of them fell through; Valjean would go after it, as sure as the sun rose in the morning, and Javert would be helpless, trapped, caught between a step onto the river to help and his treacherous memory, the memory of that day with the water and the mud and the laughter and the screaming and oh God, he cannot breathe. _He cannot breathe._

“Javert!” 

Valjean’s voice is firm in his ear once more, and Javert looked down to find that their hands were joined, and Valjean was squeezing them firmly.

“What is wrong?” Valjean asked, the first demand he had made of him. “I wish you would tell me what troubles you when you are so distant. Something is on your mind, I know it.”

“Just-the river. It is the river. I have not been here since-”

It is not entirely a lie. It is also not entirely a truth, but Valjean is distracted enough that it is sufficient.

“Of course, how thoughtless I am! Come, we shall leave here and go to the gardens. Do not worry. I will guide you. Do not look at the water.”

Javert allowed Valjean to guide him, a hand on his elbow that he was becoming much too reliant upon, a hand that he had never needed before but now he could not imagine being without. The gardens, half dead in the chill of the season, were quieter than the riverside had been and, most importantly, there were no infernal urchins to fall to their deaths. Valjean took him to a bench that was a little away from the path, not that it was very busy anyway, and Javert thought that this was probably a place that the other man frequented. He had a fondness for places well away from crowds, after all, and from this bench he could see almost the entire way to the east gate of the gardens. With a start, Javert realised that in this place, once a part of his daily beat, he had probably walked so close to Valjean that he could have locked eyes with him if he had only turned his head and taken a moment to look at the flowers. 

Perhaps Valjean was thinking the same thing, because he was smiling. Perhaps he had watched, seen Javert pacing through at speed, eyes on every face except the one he was searching for, and perhaps he had laughed. Some part of Javert bristled at the idea but the rest, the part that was tired and sick with nerves, thought that he had probably earned it. 

“Cosette and I used to come here often,” Valjean said, tucking his hands into his pockets against the cold. “I thought that we could talk about anything here, and that we did. But she never told me about the boy. I had to find that out for myself.”

Javert had little experience, even now, of the twisting and turning nature of conversation, and how one thing could be said that bore little relation to what was actually being discussed. He knew he was lacking the skill, but even he could tell that Valjean was asking him a question. A question that he did not truly wish to answer. 

“I do not care for the river,” he said carefully, looking down at his hands. “Even less so now than I did before.”

Valjean was looking at him, he could feel it, and his neck began to prickle with sweat. He did not want to talk about it here, about the water and the chill, and the crippling, crippling fear that came when he thought back to breaking the surface of the river, back to feeling it close back over his head and knowing that finally, _finally_ the water would claim him. 

His breath came in short spurts, and he did not realise that Valjean had taken his hand until there was a gentle squeeze of his knuckles. He made a small sound in his throat that sounded disgustingly close to a whimper, and turned his hand over so that Valjean’s could hold it better. He did not even mind the people passing them by, for all he could taste was the mud in his mouth and all he could hear was the rush of the water. 

_Hold him down, hold him! He’s a brute and no mistake._

“I am sorry,” Javert got to his feet, shaking off Valjean’s hand. “I should not have come out. I was not ready for it.”

He began to stride away, on shaking legs that barely held him up, and gritted his teeth for the moment that the man would call him back and his treacherous heart would stop his stride and turn, for it longed only for Valjean, Valjean, Valjean. 

But the cry did not come, and when he was far enough away in his escape, Javert glanced over his shoulder. Valjean was still sitting on the bench, watching him with the cock of his head that meant he was thinking, and he did not meet Javert’s eye. 

*

Javert was hidden in his chamber when Valjean finally returned, several hours later. He did not leave it, for Valjean would come and find him if he wished for his company and if not – well, it was probably for the best. The water, the memories, were making Javert weak, and he did not know how much longer he could withstand them. He did not know how much longer he could withstand Valjean’s kindness before he broke down and begged for more of what he did not deserve. 

But Valjean did come, eventually. Javert suspected – hoped – that he always would.

“How are you feeling, my friend?” Valjean asked, entering with a tray made up for tea and a simple supper. “I fear that our excursion may have set you back a little in your recovery.”

There was guilt in Valjean’s voice, for it had been his idea to go out, but Javert could not stand to hear it there. Whatever was happening in his mind, it was far from being Valjean’s fault. 

“I am – just tired,” he said eventually. “I should not have been churlish. You do not deserve it.” 

Valjean nodded and poured the tea. 

“You do not need to apologise. But I do have a question that I wish you to answer, if you can.”

Javert took the cup of tea that he was handed, and watched as Valjean went to light the fire, instead of proceeding with his question. It wasn’t until the logs were ablaze, and the silence had stretched almost to breaking point, that Valjean spoke again.

“The water. The river. You are afraid of it – aren’t you?”

Of course it wasn’t even a question. Of course Valjean could make such a bold statement and know that he was correct. Of course Valjean could already claim knowledge of Javert’s heart.

“Would it be such a strange thing if I was?” Javert asked, in a voice that felt steadier than it had any right to. “You were in the damned river almost as long as I, you know what it is like. It is – not something I wish to relive.”

“Of course,” Valjean took up his own tea and sat beside Javert on the bed. “But I think that there is more to the fear than what happened last summer.”

The room felt too small, and too hot with the fire in the grate. But Valjean’s leg, pressed against his own, gave him more courage than was decent, and he shook his head.

“How could you know that? How can you possibly know?”

“The children on the river today. And the pond – when I fell in, back in the summer. You were afraid. Why, when I was in the water, I thought you would faint.”

It did not please Javert to hear such accounts of his person, and he put his head in his hands. But still, it seemed, Valjean had more to say. 

“When I was in the gardens, a memory stirred. Of Montreuil, the moment you came to arrest me in the hospital. Do you remember?”

Javert groaned, for he remembered it well.

“I ran, and leapt into the water to save myself, yet I was sure – so sure – that you would follow. You were so angry, I was certain that you’d jump after me and that would be the end of it. But you did not.”

“Please-”

“I understand now. You were afraid. Even all those years ago.”

Javert remembered the incident, for he had always cursed his own cowardice. He’d rushed to the window, blood pumping from their confrontation, only to hear a splash and freeze at the very moment he had been waiting so long for, the moment to arrest Jean Valjean. A braver man, with a surer heart, would have done his duty and followed the convict. A braver man would not have failed. 

Valjean, unaware of the internal agonies, rested a warm hand on Javert’s knew, and added that heat to the shame that already burned from the inside out. 

“When did it begin? The fear of the water?”

“Do not ask me. I cannot speak of it.”

“If you do not wish to, I will not compel you. But it often helps, I have lately found, to speak my thoughts out loud.”

Valjean could hardly claim to be honest about every thought that crossed his mind, Javert was sure, but he did not think it would help to make a comment of his own voicing that thought. Not when a part of him, the boy he had long ago silenced, longed to tell the truth. 

“I was twelve years old, or thereabouts. Some boys from the village near to the prison where I lived got it in their minds that I had taken work from them, running messages and the like. They did not like me anyway, being a gypsy child, and they – they tried to kill me.”

“My God, Javert, and you were but twelve?”

“They forced me down to the riverbank,” Javert continued, for he could hardly stop now. “And they held me under the water. I thought I would die by their hands, and I would have, had one of the guards not come upon us and chased them away. So since then – the water. I think on that day and I am there, once more.”

He did not feel a rush of relief on admitting the truth, but to give it a voice did loosen the tightness in his chest by a degree or so. The only sounds in the room were the crackle of the fire and the tick of the clock, and when he finally dared to look at Valjean, he was shaken to see the man’s eyes were damp.

“Oh, Javert,” he murmured. “The river. Why did you – if you were afraid of it, why did you choose the river?”

“Ah well. What better way of ensuring I was justly punished? It was no less than I deserved.”

Valjean moved so quickly that he was on his knees in front of Javert before it even seemed he had stirred. He grasped at Javert’s hands, tears on his face.

“Javert, to hear you say such a thing. I can hardly stand it.”

Javert was struck dumb by the tears and the despair in Valjean’s voice, despair he had not heard since that first day Cosette had visited after her marriage, and Valjean had dismissed him. And this time, the despair was for Javert.

He reached out awkwardly, aware of how close Valjean was, and wiped away the tears from his cheek.

“Do not,” he said. “Please. I do not know why you weep for me.”

Valjean pressed his hand to Javert’s cheek, his fingertips curling around his ear, a touch so light that Javert half believed he imagined it. Until he felt the touch of Valjean’s lips to his forehead. That he was not imagining, for it burned like a brand. 

There were no words to be said, of that he was sure. So Javert did the only thing that made sense, and put his lips to Valjean’s. And he kissed him, for that was surely what Valjean wanted, as much as he.

It was tentative, and searching, and Valjean groaned low in his throat, pushing himself into the kiss. He put his arms around Javert, clutched at his waistcoat, pulled him closer. And Javert, who had been bold, was helpless but to take a hold of Valjean’s shirtfront for an anchor. He could not breathe, but this time it was not for terror. It was Valjean, kissing him, holding him, and if this was a dream also, he wished for it to never end. 

When Valjean broke away, Javert heard a whimper escape his own throat. 

“I weep for you because you are so very dear to me,” Valjean panted. “And I cannot bear to know you ever thought so little of your soul that you would punish yourself with your darkest fear.”

Javert’s heart, so long stone, threatened to burst from his chest, and he reached out blindly to bring Valjean once more to him. His hands shook, and his throat was full as he embraced him, pressed blind kisses to his face.

“Let us speak no more of it tonight,” he begged. “Not when I have finally found you like this.”

“Tomorrow,” Valjean promised, cradling Javert’s head in his own hands. “Tomorrow, we will talk of it.”

Javert’s tears, so long held in check, began to fall at the softness in Valjean’s face, the gentleness of his touch, the feeling in his voice.

Perhaps it was over now. Or perhaps it wasn’t, but Javert dared to hope that he would never suffer the memory alone again, and that was almost as good a thing as banishing it all together.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: *starts a oneshot in 2016 and then, suddenly, it is 2019 and here we are*


End file.
